The Chelsea’s manager Antonio Conte said in a recent interview that it is not right for the player and the club to bring back a player from injury until he is completely recovered.
FWIW, I spoke to a orthopedic medical researcher at the ACC finals in Charleston a week ago. She worked at UNC hospitals. I asked about whether her research team worked with the athletic department. She said that there was a lot of cooperation and she knew of much research going on in cooperation with the athletic teams. I asked if she was awre of any ACL research with women athletes and she said that she as aware of at least 4 studies being done at this time and that there as great interest in making progress on this problem. She was with her young daughter and our conversation was cut short, but I tried to ask if Anson was involved and she said that she hadn't talked with him personally, but knew from others involved in the research that he was very interested and appeared to keep up. FWIW #2, From some people who know the situation with Jesse, I was told several weeks ago before she tried to come back that there was never any evidence of any damage to her ACL and that the small tear in her meniscus was shown to be healed on the MRI and that she had been running and training with no pain for about two weeks at that time. I also was told what appeared to be true that the doctors had approved her return to play, but only for 10 (or 15? I forget exactly) minutes. When she returned I saw the time limit being enforced. Then her ACL went out. Was there a cause and effect situation with her healed meniscus tear and her ACL? It certainly might appear that way, but I am certainly not her doctor.
Not neccessarily true. The outer third of the Meniscus has blood supply and depending on where the tear is located (many of which happen in this area) can heal or be surgically repaired without sacrificing the cartilage through a meniscectomy. The meniscus also has little to no bearing on an ACL. They are common injuries that happen together but a torn meniscus has little impact in an ACL tear. The bigger issue is that if she had a partial tear in her previously reconstructed ACL there is a greater chance this tear happened because of its weakened structure and Laxity in the Graft. This happens commonly as well
Here we go again. We have spent so much time on this forum to try to analyze why UNC has so many serious injuries. I believe that the picture this year is a little bit clearer than previously. We had 4 serious injuries (3 ACLs and 1 Achilles raptures). It is true that Jessie recovered from her mild knee injury by the time she strarted to play. However, she had a negging groin pain which caused significant discomfort to her. Emily had an ankle injury just before her ACL tear. Ru had a chronic ankle injury. Maya also had chronic pain that slowed her down significantly. The bottom line is that all the players with major injuries had a condition that change their abilty to run. Therefore, they had to compenzate their run and when you do that bad things can happen. Especially if you have a system that requires maximun physical pressure on the opponent. You might play only 15 minutes but the effort is 100% like in Scarpa's case. There are other reasons too, but IMHO this is the main one at least this year.
No creativity going forward. Press press press. Princeton is praying for UVa. They are 4-0 vs ACC opponents
And 4-0 against the state of North Carolina. Princeton can play Virginia (Quarterfinal), Duke (Semifinal) and FSU (Final). If they win all those games, they are officially the ACC Killer (of all time).
They’ve had s good run. It’s over in the next rd. They found two lucky goals, with minimal shots a game. Lightning doesn’t strike twice in the NCAA tourney
Great. You must be kidding. Good run. LOL. But who cares this is only WoSo. Right? You should, because a bunch of very talented girls’ dream got crushed by AD singlehandedly. Remember I’m the very negative guy, who told you UNC’s problems two months ago. The soccer God just punished AD today. This is probably my last post at least until AD is the coach. I will mention name of the players. However, the blame is on AD, not on the girls. The team was so grossly mismanaged by AD that it is not even funny. Lesnyak: it was not enough the whole season to teach her how to manage the ball. She was a disaster to happen. It happend today. Russo: one of the biggest failures of AD. Instead of teaching her how to pass off dribble she just kept dribbling and shooting in positions where she did not have any chances. She is a very talented girl, but under AD she will be lost. She did always the long cross pass, which is very cool once but get old after a while. Andrzejewski: I love her. But again soccer is a team sport. You have to pass, and it did not happen. Where was AD? Redei: she was injured until September. She worked very hard to come back. By the way she was he highest ranked recruit for years for AD. Well. She had the first goal agains FSU, the ACC winner goal against Duke and the goal pass today. You never believe that all he time she was sent out and subbed after a great play. She made tons of diagonal run and never got the ball. Why? Because AD never practiced this. You think UNC is boring? Blame AD. I decent striker should never go to UNC. Joanna: this is hard. I respect her a lot. She worked very hard to come back after 2 ACLs. But she is not the same player that she was before. Her mobility is severely damaged. She was not able to play #10. But she did, because of AD’s loyalty. Loyalty is one of the most important values to me, but not when it sacrifices the whole team. She was not able to cover ground and pass affectively. No problem to AD. Let the strikers cut back to her. In the beginning the two fullbacks. Do you think that the two major injuries of he fullbacks were random? Not at all. It was related to the extra work. This system worked very well in the beginning but after the injuries it collapsed. But AD’s loyalty to Jo was stronger than his loyalty to the team. Sad. You always can say there is next year. But IMHO AD has to look at the mirror and say I scrood up my girls and time to retire. But it is only WoSo, right? Except if you are one of the girls.
I've not been wanted to look at this page until I could work up the courage. As fan I am sad. Sad for the players who worked so hard. "Shouldn't" have lost the game as they significantly outplayed Princeton especially from about the 10 minute mark to the end of the game. Dominated possession. Sought to score by short passing in the box, (although Russo tried to hit longer but was off target or straight at the keeper.) Shots pretty much squared with what one would expect from the possession time with UNC out shooting the Tigers 24-9 and on frame by the same ration 8-3. (By period shots were 10-4, 11-4, 3-1.) Princeton is a good team and deserved to make the third round. Their two senior midfielders (Gregoire and Larkin) were great and the Tigers also had the speed and size in forward Mimi Asom. Against NCSU they played a midfield game and worked the ball against the defense, but against UNC they were forced to play a significantly different game as Carolina controlled the midfield and the Tigers' offense consisted mostly of multiple long balls blasted up the middle looking for Mimi Asom, and once or twice to Abby Givens. The sad part was that both of the Princeton goals were slow dribblers from 18 yards out into an empty net. Although the first goal was credited to Asom, it actually came off of Taylor as a short range clearance blasted off her leg toward the goal and we all watched with horror as is made its way gently across the grass into the net. The overtime goal was essentially the same, with Sam coming out for an attempted clearance but confusion reigned and the ball made it's way to the net with Taylor chasing, but to no avail. I am very sad for the seniors. Their run should have been a little longer. They gave it their all. It would be easy to place blame for this ending, but girls doing their best do not deserve blame, and I am not as harsh on Anson as European is. He has a good brain trust in his assistant coaches and they do communicate. Mark my words, next year will be a longer run into the NCAAs!
Observation and question. As the season progressed it became obvious that the trouble spot would be in goal. In the past the keepers always seemed to progress with play. This year the opposite was true, so much so that I have worried something else might be amiss. The back line became reluctant to play to the keeper at all instead choosing to kick out of bounds thus losing an important aspect of playing out of the back. I'm not looking to fix blame or put anyone down. They are all special and gave their all. However, when a player is struggling, for what ever reason, you relieve them and work them back if possible. Thus my question: Why only one keeper?
I appreciate your post. One keeper because several other prospects fell through. When it became obvious that only one keeper was in the fold, the staff searched for a graduate student, or a possible transfer but nothing worked out. They finally located a UNC student who had some good success in club ball and a four year starter for her high school. She signed on, but the reality of practicing every day and that she would seldom play sunk in and she decided to quit and focus on her studies. So they tried to get by with one keeper. ...Next year (2018) there is a great keeper prospect coming in who plays in Charlotte and is rapidly improving through USYNT and interntational call-ups. Another youth national team keeper is lined up for 2019.
What I like so much about this thread is the number of highly successful, experienced coaches who read it and contribute. People who have won multiple championships, coached some of the best players in the world, inspired great loyalty from those players. Their willingness to analyze all the team's needs, each individual's strengthes and weaknesses, without having actually met those players and without having been with them every day and coached them in practice after practice is truly generous. If only we could convince one of them to come coach UNC we might finally, after all these years, have a chance to win something. I know, though, that they are so successful with the teams they already are coaching that there is no way we could convince one of them to come to the pit of despair and mediocrity that is the Carolina team.
@Soccerhunter I really respect you based on your writing, but your summary about the game was a PC BS. What do you mean that you feel sorry for the seniors? What about the other girls? Most of them are YNT players with full of pride. You don’t think that they feel humiliated the way they lost? You really did not address any of the points I made. When you have a very talented group of players and you do not make the 3rd round is a shame. Especially, when the other team is not even the same level of talents. I know It is not PC, I should have said that they were great. By the way the 2nd goal reminded me a U10 AYSO game. The first one should have never happened. Again, in any other place AD should be fired. Oh I’m sorry this is college WoSo, I forgot. So it is OK. Next year will be better. LOL
I have the greatest respect for AD as a human being and a coach. He is a great role model. He does a lot of great things for the girls to become good people. However, I do not believe that he should continue to work. Time to retire. The game is changed and the old structure is not working anymore.
I did not see the game but watched the Princeton goals. For anyone that did not see them, here they are: I don't want to pile on Sam but those are two really fundamental keeper mistakes that contributed to Princeton's goals. (I'm sure you know this, Euro fb fan, it's Leshnak) They're mistakes that I would not expect a middle-of-the-road high school keeper to make. It appeared to me, on the first goal, that Otto would have been able to prevent the goal had Leshnak not come out. There was a definite breakdown in communication. The second goal was a little more difficult but, again, the defender, this time Wubben-Moy, appeared to have a good chance at preventing the goal. It seemed to be another communication issue between the defender and Leshnak. On both goals, when Leshnak came out, she changed the course of the path that the defenders were running and, with that, diminished the chances of preventing the goal. I want to qualify my comments by saying it's easy for all of us, watching the game on the sidelines, on stream, or on TV, to say what should have been done and to criticize players for not doing what should have been done. It's much more difficult for the players, in the heat of the battle, to always do what should have been done. I always feel bad for any player, even opponents, that I see committing those types of fundamental mistakes.
Well said. It's fair to say that the keeper fouled up the first Princeton goal as there were two UNC defenders, I believe, between the Princeton forward and the ball when she came out. She could have stayed back--or come out and knocked the ball out of bounds. To kick it straight at three oncoming players was, well, unwise. The second (and game deciding) goal was more forgivable and one of those tough decisions that all keepers must make when it looks like an opponent has a good chance of getting to a long ball and coming in on her 1v1. The Princeton forward beat the UNC defender to the ball, which certainly justifies trying to go out and grab it. As always, when a keeper comes out and doesn't get the ball, there is trouble. Had she stayed back, it's impossible to know what would have happened. But to say that it was a horrible mistake is wrong--keepers at all levels give up goals on similar plays quite regularly. This one just happened to be a game-decider in the NCAA.
I am still learning but I'd say people sometimes mixup problems with Women's soccer generally with UNC's problems. 1) lack of creativity in the final third (can creativity be taught?) it certainly is not encouraged in club at younger ages. 2) essentially completing a roster by 9th and 10th grader commits. The end result is that unless you are getting the super top (the "best" of even the national team U-littles) you may end up with someone equivalent to some other kid who never got a look by the top schools in 9th/10th grade. (If stanford is getting first choice at NT players, Duke second, are you better off taking what's left as a 9th grader WNT or waiting a couple years to take a commit? ) on the second goal it appears UNC's center back was not as fast as the princeton forward. So think about that, UNC known for athleticism seems to have their CB outran by a princeton forward. The first goal the keeper should have stayed in, but that's on the coaching staff, not the goalie. Sam is physically amazing, but at the end of her second year if there's tactical mistakes that's on the coaches. Not sure what the right answer was on the second goal since the CB seems to have been beat.